Using GPL Licenced Products
Is it possible to include a GPLed product with your product without changing or using any of their code with your product? If you write and sell binary applications that run side by side a GPLed product and makes calls to it, is it possible to distrubute that GPLed product (following all the rules of the GPL) side by side your open source code?
One of the biggest things that confuses me, is that if you don’t change the code (or even even look at), but talk to it using other means, does that mean that you have to release your code as well? For example, you write an application that requires a database, and communicates to that database using ODBC. Now you release your code under a binary licence and sell it and you decide to give out a free cd with MySQL and its source as sort of a bonus when you buy your product. You product, since supporting ODBC, will talk to MySQL as your database engine for the product. Would that mean since it talks to MySQL, it requires that your app be release under the GPL as well?
Isn’t that the same as a using a closed source web browser to access a GPLed web server? Anyone who knows, your help would be greatly rewarded.
* update * I asked MySQL legal department and they gave me a funny response. Read the email on page 2.
